New Zealand Gender Critical feminists

[NZGC]

twitter.com/BeeFaerie/status/1402549004487913478?s=20

Im wondering if many of you have saw this (from yesterday) where the Minister of Women pretends to not know what the sex class biological woman is. Labour are determined to bring in self ID. This is entering dangerous territory.

The push back is from National's spokesperson for women Nicola Grigg.

This makes me so angry. This comment….

^” Great comments but what the heck was
@NicolaWillisMP doing saying “biological women”? All women are “biological women”, for goodness sake. Nobody’s a non-biological woman. Presumably she meant cis/cis gender women, so then why didn’t she say “cis women”?”^

😑

I have just written to Nicola thanking her for standing up for women.

I wrote to Nicola too - I am going to try and send a letter a day for the next week and send a couple of the pro forma ones off SUFW site.

I know @FierceBarrieFierceBarrie I was so cross last night when I came across it. Though I thought the absolute worst was the senior law lecturer asking the press gallery to investigate the ‘anti trans’ activist working for the National party.

Why? Why why why does NZ have to have its head so thoroughly up its ass on this? Why? Why Ardern? She's not stupid. But she is way too good at jumping on what's cool, no matter whether it's right or hopelessly wrong.

National are a bunch of kleptocrat-enabling toads who are wrong about everything. Except this. I'd bet money they back women's rights in this case for all the wrong reasons, but I'm past caring. Any port in a storm.

This is so crazy. Thanks for highlighting. Writing to Nicola tonight. Never thought I’d be voting National…

I think it was someone on mumsnet who wrote, words to the effect of, ‘I don’t care if there are photos of the Tories eating kittens, if they oppose self ID I am voting for them’

I’m at that point too - I will vote for any party who will stand against SelfID. I don’t particularly like National but Labour are a disgrace.

Their lying and subterfuge in this area is unforgivable - Grant Robertson (as Minister of Sport) appears to be using deliberate misdirection again today with his conflation of "everyone should be able to play sport" and "rules for elite sport" (also completely avoiding any mention of women’s safety). Gosh I am so cross.

I just saw this too -
twitter.com/henrycooke/status/1402835217904070661?s=20
'Large group of National MPs accepted a petition from 'Save Women's Sports' today. The Greens say the whole push is an attempt to conflate the ongoing debate about elite level sports with inclusion in community sport, which is what the guidelines cover'

twitter.com/henrycooke/status/1402835375974862849?s=20
@henrycooke
Sports Minister Grant Robertson says there is an "ongoing consultation process" but the starting point should be inclusion. He's offered a briefing for Mark Mitchell on the matter.

How silly of us to not understand - Grant just needs to explain it to us. The Greens and Labour are completely trying to distort the impact (immediate and flow on) this will have on women's sport. Elite women's sporting achievement comes from participation and access to community sport.

I pray National take this up - it is the only way we will be able to bypass the media's gatekeeping.

the starting point should be inclusion

The Canadians have been repeating this mantra for years. The Scottish are too. Sorry to hear NZ are now following on.

Women's rights are not about "inclusion". They aren't supposed to be inclusive. That's pretty much the entire point.
It's absurd that it needs to be told.

Grr, how is labour getting this so wrong. And, no, the starting point cannot be inclusion. Save Our Sport proposes the Pike solution which, IMO, is far better:

Of all the rules a sports body can adopt, we only want the safe ones.
Of the set of safe rules, we only want the ones that are also fair.
Of the set of rules that are both safe and fair, we want only those that are also inclusive.
Thus, we can order the competing values so that safety comes first, then fairness, followed by inclusion.

www.savewomenssport.com/solutions

Wishing Kiwi women good luck. I have family there and they are completely TWAW despite not being Labour voters. It's a cheap way for fairly conservative white middle-class Kiwis to virtue signal. Like Wales and Scotland and Canada, NZ's commitment to being progressive at any cost has made a lot of people blind to what's happening.

My family Auckland were very proud that their daughter's best friend is on testosterone and lined up for a double mastectomy. They seemed to think that I (being a Labour voter and more left-wing than them) would be impressed by how liberal they were. I asked them how they'd feel if it was their daughter who was transitioning. They lied through their teeth that they'd be happy if it made her happy. They'd be absolutely devastated: she's 19 and they're already concerned that she doesn't have a boyfriend!

I am meeting my local (National) MP next week after writing her a long email about my concerns re self ID and “gender” medicine. I think she’ll be receptive.

Good on you @youngheartsrunfree I hope the meeting goes well.

Agree completely @SunnyintheSun - it’s an easy way for people to prove they are ‘caring’. There is so little thought given to the consequences - for the individual and wider society. But then unless you have followed the issue there has been so little coveragein our media or discussion by politicians as to what the possible implications are.

The public has been kept in wilful ignorance by a media who gatekeeps the discussion. So it’s easy to understand why people are unaware of the incursion into women’s rights and what that means. I have recently tried discussing it with people I know and except for one father who had a daughter who competes in athletics there was no awareness. Hopefully that has changed a bit in the last couple of weeks - if discussion can become widespread amongst the general public I think you will see attitudes change.

To get that critical mass of coverage though we will need something like lots more athletes signalling concern or the National party pushing it. Something that is big enough they can’t just ignore.

It is something I am starting to feel brave enough to discuss with my friends, and we’re all on the same page. It’s definitely not something I feel able to raise with people I don’t know very well, and trust.

But we’re constantly questioning ourselves.

We wonder - are we just over the hill? Out of touch? Not down the kids anymore? Dinosaurs? On the wrong side of history?

I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like it, but I’m made to question myself about it a lot.

It’s also really discombobulating to be truly left-leaning politically, a feminist, an LGB-ally (my beloved DB is gay) - but to be framed as a ‘conservative bigot’ on this issue.

I’m not a bigot because I care about women and girls. Alternatively - why aren’t people who want to throw women’s hard-won rights under the bus ‘bigots’?

It’s so hard to bring it up with people - and you know you sound like a weirdo because you know so much about it and they have this bare surface exposure to the issues so you end up holding back on it - at least I do.

I have young children at primary school and the curriculum, ( and proposed changes) is bad enough… I dread the introduction of this and you can see it coming.

‘ It’s so hard to bring it up with people - and you know you sound like a weirdo because you know so much about it and they have this bare surface exposure to the issues so you end up holding back on it - at least I do.’

This - you’ve hit the nail on the head @NZGC. I was trying to explain to a colleague the other day why some women in our organisation were upset about pronouns but we’re afraid to say anything. The colleague had no idea of the backstory and was genuinely surprised that staff wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking up. It enrages me to see so many white male staff proudly declaring their pronouns without a thought for the women around them - but speak up and you look ‘unkind’.

It’s so hard to bring it up with people - and you know you sound like a weirdo because you know so much about it and they have this bare surface exposure to the issues so you end up holding back on it - at least I do.

Yes, absolutely!

Speaking of the curriculum, I worked at the MoE (being deliberately vague, but if you’re in NZ you’ll probably know what I mean), and our accepted line in response to any correspondence that comes in is so ‘woke’. Nothing else will be signed out or approved. There is zero room for discussion.

You may find when you bring it up that more people are 'Whew, I thought I must be going crazy. This is madness, isn't it?' than you expected. That's certainly my experience here. I persevered, and so did a lot of other women, and things are gradually beginning to shift. But it's not easy and I imagine if you live in a small town it's hard. I think most of us here will have lost friends and even become estranged from family members. I hope, once this scandalous situation is revealed for the homophobia and misogyny it is, we can mend fences.

Keep plugging away and keep coming back here to update us.

It’s of some comfort to know that others feel the same/have had the same experiences

God I can only begin to imagine what you saw at the MofE @FierceBarrie.

Thank you @Shedbuilder it has all gone under the radar in NZ a bit (except on Twitter 😒) - the media has not reported on it until recently. Except to lecture us on how ‘stunning and brave’ trans athletes are…or to tell us that birthing language needs to be updated to become inclusive. All done without reference to ‘women’.

There are no well know woman columnists like Janice Turner or a newspaper like The Times that is prepared to stand against this - to offer a small beacon of light.

Our own Ministry of Women decide to include trans women in its definition of women in 2018 with no consultation, research or publicity. It was only confirmed via an Official Information request last year.

But it’s coming to a head and the accusations of ‘hate speech’ and ‘’hate group’ are flowing freely and it’s all a little disheartening. But hopefully the light now shining on the issue will wake more people up.

Not sure if there is another thread but, woop woop, there’s going to be a public consultation on self-ID after the second reading:

i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/125423789/bill-simplifying-birth-certificate-sex-change-gains-momentum

Bit late in the day but better than nothing. Now the real work starts!

Good luck to the women in New Zealand! Hope you can massively raise the profile of self-id and the issues around it.